Redskins at Lions: Portis' Pockets Straight, But What About His Knees?

Washington Redskins (5-2) at Detroit Lions (0-6)
1:00 p.m. Ford Field
I’m going to try to keep this entry short and sweet. The Redskins took care of business against Cleveland. That’s about all you can say about that performance. They looked strictly average against an average team. Cleveland’s defense may be improving, but Derek Anderson showed the same inefficiency that he’s shown all of this season and most of last (despite putting up decent numbers). Braylon Edwards and the rest of Cleveland’s receivers dropped passes. No one opened any holes for Jamal Lewis. And unless Clinton Portis ran directly into Shaun Rogers, no one felt like getting in Portis’ way. I’d like to think the Redskins had a lot to do with Cleveland looking pedestrian, but I think most of it was the Browns doing. Even with all of that, the Redskins still needed two different goal line stands and a Phil Dawson kick to go wide right before getting a three point win over a team they should have dominated.

I’m not going to sit here and complain about a win. However, after a terrific start, this team has done nothing to impress me in a loss to the formerly pitiful Rams and a narrow win over the Browns. The passing game that was bold and daring in the first four wins, has reverted back to the 8-10 yard methodical attack. There’s nothing wrong with that if Jason Campbell can complete 65% of his passes. 14-23 for 167 yards against a bad secondary is not going to cut it. I don’t think the methodical passing game is going to be Campbell’s strength. He may be able to pick up a first down or two on each drive with some consistency. But eventually he’s going to misfire on a 3rd-and-5 or 3rd-and-6. You might as well take shots downfield on 1st and 2nd downs…especially with Portis running so well and defenses stacking the box. It would be great to see Jim Zorn take the same shots downfield that he did against New Orleans, Arizona and Dallas.

That brings me to Portis. This guy was quietly having a monster year. The secret is out. The whispers about Portis being a potential MVP candidate have already started. In the past week, most sports outlets finally grabbed a hold of the most recent rushing statistics and noticed that Portis was not only leading the league in rushing, but he was doing so by a wide margin. Portis has 818 yards in 7 games this season. He is averaging about five yards a carry. He is the only back in the league that is averaging more than 100 yards a game. If you put him on a 16-game pace based on his current production, his numbers would be eerily similar to Shaun Alexander’s numbers when he was the NFL MVP in 2005.

As great as that could be for the Redskins this season, it could have major ramifications for the future of the team and for Portis. The 27-year-old is now in his 7th NFL season and on pace for the most carries of his career. If the Redskins keep giving him the ball at this rate, he will rack up 373 carries by the end of the regular season. There are only two running backs in recent NFL history that have carried the ball 370 times or more in a season and not seen their production dip dramatically. Eric Dickerson (multiple times in the 1980’s) and LaDainian Tomlinson (in 2002) have managed this type of workload and continued their fine careers. Just about every other running back that has surpassed the 370 carry mark has become a shell of his former self. It happened to premier rushers like Earl Campbell and Walter Payton. It happened to young, promising backs like Christian Okoye and Barry Foster. It happened to backs that had a lot of miles on them, like Curtis Martin and Eddie George. It happened to backs didn’t have a lot of miles on them, like Terrell Davis and Jamal Anderson. Both Anderson and Davis eclipsed the 370 plateau in 1998, and neither one played in the NFL after 2001. Davis managed just 17 games in the next three seasons while Anderson played in 21.

Portis is an old 27-years old. He has a lot of mileage on his tires. Only Tomlinson has rushed for more yardage in the last seven seasons. Portis also has a long history of lower body injuries, especially around his knees. A serious knee injury is usually the death knell of a good running back, and Portis has already managed to survive one. It’s incredible with the amount of hits Portis has already taken, that he could be on pace to rush the ball 373 times for more than 1,800 yards this season. It goes against NFL history and common sense. As well as Portis is doing, he might be doing too well. There needs to be games this season when Portis only carries the ball 15-17 times instead of the 23-25 times he has been averaging. The Redskins signed Alexander for a reason, they’ve given tons of money to Ladell Betts (who will be back from injury by the time Dallas comes to town) and they even invested in Rock Cartwright. None of those three scare opposing defenses the way Portis does, but Zorn is going to have to use all three of them a lot more than he has been. Even if Portis somehow makes it through this season somewhat unscathed (and he’s currently dealing with a hip injury as it is), if they keep running Portis like they are, it’s going to spell trouble for the Redskins and their running game in the not-to-distant future. I’m enjoying all the success Clinton is having, especially because his talents are leading to team victories. But I want to see him have that success for another three or four seasons…at the least. At this pace, he’s not going to. History says that Portis should already be on the way out of the NFL. He doesn’t need the Redskins coaches to help run him out of the league earlier than anticipated.

Portis leads the Redskins to lovely Detroit this week. The Skins will find themselves in front of thousands of fans dressed as empty seats on Sunday in Ford Field. As a franchise, the Lions have failed from the top to the bottom. From the president to the hot dog guy. From the coaches to the players. The fans (or lack thereof) are well aware of the situation. This is a team with a 0-6 record and seven straight losing seasons. I don’t think that streak is jeopardy anytime soon.

So the Skins are coming off a win. They are heavy favorites against a winless team. They are overwhelming expected to dominate a team that’s front office, coaching staff and roster has already gone through a few shake-ups during the season. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Doesn’t this seem like déjà vu? I swear people were saying the same thing before the Redskins game against St. Louis.

Here is why I’m not worried. If you ignored the statistics and looked at the Rams roster, you could see that there was a healthy amount of talent on it. Not a whole lot of talent, but certainly enough to avoid going winless and maybe even enough to reel off a couple of victories in a row. After beating Washington, the Rams embarrassed the Cowboys. With or without Tony Romo, a 20-point win against Dallas is pretty good. The Rams, if you can believe it, are only two games out of first place in the NFC West (which says more about the state of the West than the state of the Rams). You could tell, if you watched any of the Rams games, that this was a team that was still fighting and had enough talent to win a minimum of four or five games. And when they replaced their coach during their bye week, it was also a team that had a new sense of purpose and that was playing for more than just pride.

Detroit is not that team. The Lions are dead. I predicted here about three weeks ago, that the Lions would end the season at 0-16. I truly believe the Lions are that bad. During the ensuing weeks, I’ve seen nothing to change my opinion. In fact, it seems as if the Lions are going out of their way to become the first 0-16 in NFL history. Despite firing Matt Millen (which was long overdue), the Lions kept pathetic Ron Marinelli as their head coach. They traded a former first round draft pick and one of their more talented players to Dallas for draft picks. They’ve benched a decent quarterback by pretending he had an injury and placing him on IR. This is a team that got inside information on how to beat the Packers from KGB spy Comrade Brett Favre and still lost the game. By 23 points.

On paper, it appears as though the Lions have been in several close games. Even that is misleading. Of their six losses, only the 12-10 loss to Minnesota was really as close as it looked in the box score. In the other five games, Detroit found themselves in a three-score hole at some point in each contest. And even in their close loss, the Lions found a way to lose embarrassingly. New starting quarterback Dan Orlovsky took a safety that ended up being the difference in the ball game. Not because he was sacked in the endzone or fumbled into it. He was scrambling around the endzone and simply forgot where the backline was and ran out of bounds without realizing it. I’ve never seen anything like it.

The Redskins loss to the Rams was disheartening and disappointing. At the time it was even a bit embarrassing. But the further we get from that game, the less shocking and surprising that loss becomes. However, a loss to Detroit would be inexcusable. Washington is better than Detroit all across the board. There is no reason the Redskins should lose to the Lions. None. You could argue that the Redskins could commit three or four turnovers and several costly penalties and hand a win to Detroit. You could argue it, but there’s no reason the Redskins should turn the ball over against Detroit unless Portis becomes bored and simply puts the football down and leaves the stadium. Believe me, I’ve tried to come up with some feasible way the Redskins lose this game, but I can’t. The Skins should win this one going away. Which, knowing the Redskins, means that they’ll somehow find a way to make this a close game.